Breath-hold MR imaging of focal liver lesions: comparison of fast and ultrafast techniques

The performance of breath-hold MR imaging using two T2-weighted hybrid sequences (TSE, TGSE), two T2-weighted single-shot sequences (HASTE, EPI-SE), and one T1-weighted gradientecho sequence (FLASH) was compared with a standard conventional T2-weighted SE sequence in 20 patients with focal liver lesions. Liver signal-to-noise ratio was highest spleen-liver contrast-to-noise ratio (54.3 ± 8.3) and thee HASTE (41.1 ± 12.5) sequence, whereas the highest spleen-liver contrast-noise-ratio was obtained by the TSE sequence (38.9 ± 20.7). Lesion-liver CNR was highest with the TSE sequence (63.9 ± 21.4). With both TSE and HASTE significantly (p < 0.01) more lesions were detected as compared with SE and EPE-SE sequences. Our results indicate that breath-hold TSE and HASTE sequences will eventually replace conventional T2-weighted SE techniques due to their insensitivity to motion artifacts, superior lesion detectability and inherently short acquisitions times.Correspondence to: J. Gaa